Old man in the sea by Ernest Hemingway. Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1952. Genre: Fiction

A classic book that will bore you

The old man is about an old man named Santiago fishing in the sea and he gets a 1000 pound marlin that bites his line. The old man spent several days at sea trying to reel in the huge fish so he could tie it to the side of his boat. Eventually he got the fish close enough to throw a spear at it and he tied it to the side of the boat. The book ended with the old man trying to defend off sharks that kept biting away at the dead marlin on the side of his boat until the old man was left with no marlin and wasted all of his time trying to catch the great fish.

“The writing was repetitious and predictable. Very disappointing from such a renowned writer” -Amazon comment (Dulcinea)

I choose this quote because the old man in the sea is a very repetitious book and is a lot of the same. Almost the entire book is based around an old man fishing in the sea and the amount of detail describing some of the things are very  redundant and useless. I wish the fishing portion of the book would be a bit shorter and the conclusion of the book would be longer maybe with the old man talking to the boy and the other fisherman.

The books writing style is highly based on detail. There is a lot of detail. The author describes an old man fishing a 1000 pound marlin for almost the entire book thats how much detail is in this short novel. Nothing in this book lacks (in terms of detail), if anything there is too much.

“It was was cold after the sun went down and the old man’s sweat dried cold on his back and his arms and his legs.” -Ernest hemingway (pg.47)

Although if i was to compare this book to any book I would probably compare it to Our Town because the book also has a lot of useless dialogue. Although in terms of different things going on in the book Our Town had a lot more going on. Again, The old man in the sea takes place in the sea for 90 pages.

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated”

The quote above to me means that you can be destroyed and feel like nothing is going your way, but you're never defeated. You can can just keep trying and trying until it goes your way. Kind of like a game; you can lose a game of basketball but the next game you come back striving to do better and you win.

If i were to compare this book to a life story i would probably compare it to the snowstorm when we had no electricity and there was nothing to do. I would rather do nothing then read this book because it was that boring. Overall i rate this book 1/5 paws. Its not worth your time reading this book and i had to force myself to read through it.